Though US searchers continue to search in ever-larger numbers - 5.48 billion searches in January - the rate of growth has slowed, writes MediaPost, citing comScore figures. That number of searches was up 11 percent from January 2005, but it was significantly less than the 42 percent increase between January 2004 and January 2005 searches.

"The good news for search companies is that the utilization of search queries for advertising purposes continues to increase," according to Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore Networks. Some 57.2 percent of search query results included a sponsored ad in December 2005, compared with 49.1 percent a year earlier.

Google accounted for 41.4 percent of January searches, six percentage points more than a year ago, reports ClickZ. Yahoo remained in second place with a 28.7 percent share, down around three percentage points; and MSN was third with 13.7 percent, down approximately two percentage points. Ask Jeeves increased its share slightly, going from 5.1 percent to 5.6 percent.